Free clinic management software, and exactly what the free part covers

What can "free" hide in clinic software?

A free price tag on clinic management software can mean several different things, and the difference tends to surface months later, after your patient records are inside. So ask first. Is it a free plan or a trial with an end date? Is it free for every doctor, or only the first? Are messages to patients charged per SMS or WhatsApp message? Is the product paid for by advertising, or by what can be done with prescription data? Is taking your records out as easy as putting them in?

A paid element is not wrong in itself if the vendor says so upfront; finding out late is the problem. Put the checklist below to any product before you register your first patient, including ours. We go through the costs that usually come up in free versus paid clinic software: the hidden costs.

What is free in Vitels, and what needs Vitels Pro?

The free plan is the full daily OPD for one doctor: registration, queue, consultation, prescription pad, printing, billing, history, calendar, admin, the day book and receipts, offline mode and full export. There is no cap on patients, visits or prescriptions, and no limit on the number of attendants and receptionists.

Vitels Pro adds three things: more than one doctor in the clinic, each with their own queue, fees, timings, favourites and templates; an online patient registration link for your clinic; and revenue analysis with report export. It costs ₹999 per clinic per month, flat, billed monthly in advance through Razorpay, with no GST charged at present.

New clinics get a 14-day Pro trial with no card needed to start. If you do not subscribe, nothing is charged, Pro features switch off and everything in the free plan keeps working. Clinics that signed up before Pro launched keep all three Pro features at no charge for as long as they use Vitels.

How does Vitels pay for itself?

Through Vitels Pro, which a clinic chooses to pay for and can cancel from Plan & billing in one click. Vitels gets nothing from your clinic's data beyond running the service: your clinic is the data fiduciary and Vitels is the data processor.

These rules hold on both plans and are written into the product requirements, not a promotional period. Vitels staff have no standing access to patient records; the security page explains how clinics are kept apart.

• No sale, licensing or analysis of prescription data for pharma companies
• No advertising inside the product
• No routing of your patients to any pharmacy, and no tracking of where a prescription is filled
• No Vitels branding, pharmacy reference or QR code on a prescription

Is there a free download?

There is nothing to download. Vitels is a browser app: you sign in at app.vitels.in with your +91 mobile number and an OTP, on the computer you already have. The day's queue, recent patient history, the drug list and the doctor's favourites are kept on the device, which is why the queue, consultation, printing and billing carry on when the internet drops. Each doctor's medical council registration is verified by the Vitels team, usually within one working day.

If you only need a printable pad or certificate today, the free browser tools make a prescription pad, a medical certificate for sick leave or a fitness certificate on your letterhead. They need no account and nothing is uploaded.